The various notational means of signifying and conveying the composer's decisions and specifications to the various media for the electronic production of musical sound are probably temporary both in their exact nature and variety. But this should not be construed as a basis for concluding that these notational practices are, therefore, of consequence only to the historian of the ephemeral, or to the operators and designers of such media. The characteristics of these notations and, indeed, the very fact of their probable ephemerality embody implications of far more than mere “historical” interest, implications which extend significantly beyond the nature of the current means and even the structures of the particular media.

The conspicuous failure of folklife studies to progress far beyond the collection and classification of materials has been accompanied by a pervasive vagueness in terminology. A. L. Lloyd decries the imprecision of “folk” — “a gawky term suggesting English condescension or German soulfulness” — and Wiora suggests abandoning “ambiguous terms such as ‘folk’ and ‘folk song’ “ altogether. Maud Karpeles - a veteran of many terminological debates — concludes gloomily that “it is in the nature of the subject that we cannot draw up a precise scientific definition of folk song which will serve to differentiate it entirely from all other forms of music.” Scientific or not, this paper seeks to explore existing definitions and suggest alternatives.

For more than two decades, since we built the Jerusalem Melograph in 1957, we had been in touch, in one way or another, with Charles Seeger, the scholar and researcher. Above all, he was a unique and marvelous human being. A desire to understand an unveil basic laws which govern musical expression in its multiple manifestations was central to his work and it dictated his choice of areas of investigation. For example: the factors which shape the writing down of oral traditions; the musical parameters of speech; the bridge between language and music; the factors which determine the meaning of modal frameworks; the significance of musical components in performance compared to written realizations—these were but a few of the areas with which he dealt. The informant, whether composer, performer, or auditor, constituted an important variable in all of his investigations. On the whole, Seeger never lost sight of the human being.

Musical perception is based on many complex psychic processes, of which, up to now, we have very little knowledge. We do not know as much as we should about the various roles of music in different cultures nor about the universal principles by which musical units are built into the human brain—stored, remembered, identified, recognized, handed down within traditions, etc.

Two-part singing, based predominantly on the drone type of polyphony, is a phenomenon which is still common in the Razlog district of Bulgaria. Ritual songs such as those for St. Lazarus’ Day, St. George's Day, and Easter, rain-begging, dance songs, and harvest songs are all well preserved though rarely performed, and are representative of what is known as the “old style” of singing. This type of singing is performed mainly by older women, recreating from the past songs which they once sang as young women and girls. Characteristic are narrow-range melodies commonly based on the following scale formations: ABC, ABCD, ABCDE, with or without the subtonic G, a major second below the tonic A, which ends all melodies in the collection (the melodies have been transposed for comparative purposes). Also characteristic are the traditional, harsh-sounding parallel majoren oinor seconds. Alongside this older style exists a “new style” of part singing which to a certain extent is limited to younger women. Melodies in the “new style” have a larger ambitus, with the range formulas 1-6, VII-6, 1-7, and VII-7. Although the younger women are relatively familiar with the older style and sometimes condescend to use it, they seem to prefer the modern style, in which the melodic range is less restricted and more consonant-sounding intervals are used.

Among the Yoruba people of S. W. Nigeria, there are innumerable poetic genres, or manners of intonation, rigidly prescribed by ritual convention (labelled simply “chant” in the West). Some of these genres—notably Ijálá and Rárà—have already been treated by scholars at the textual and/or linguistic levels. Śangó praise-poetry has hitherto received attention only from the literary standpoint. In a recent classification of indigenous poetic genres (Olatunji), the rendering of ritual praise-poetry with a particular intonation is given the name Pípé Òrìşá: for each órìşá, or deity, Pìpè has its own characteristic intonation. Thus, a sub-genre of Pìpè Òrìşá (the religious counterpart to the aforementioned secular Rárá chanting) is here referred to as Şángó-Pìpé. Literally, pìpè (pronounced KPEE-KPAY) means “to call or summon;” the indigenous term pìpè òrìşà derives from a specific moment in a cult ceremony when the priest or priestess invokes the òrìşá.

Frequent use of supplementary syllables distinguishes the singing from the speech of many Irish folk singers. These syllables are formed in the meaningful text by recourse to various procedures which have their basis in the spoken language; but the lengthening of speech in song greatly enlarges their scope. It is true that the extra syllables are weakly stressed ones; nevertheless, their number can be so great that their presence becomes quite obtrusive. They obtruded forcefully on the ear of an Anglo-Irish poet of the nineteenth century, William Allingham, as he listened to a fair-day ballad-seller singing a long Anglo-Irish song; and he took the opportunity to amuse his Victorian public by printing one of its stanzas in mock phonetic spelling:

after which he gave the orthographical text as follows:

A recent article by Jairazbhoy in Ethnomusicology is perhaps the first cogent account of the oboe in India. Here I wish to offer a few comments on his paper and give some supplementary material and ideas.

The survival of any type of music in Ghana is dependent upon the extent to which the music is able to satisfy the values the people look for in such music. The values, which may be aesthetic or structural, social or religious, may operate individually or in a simultaneous complexity. In other words the factors that shape and maintain the folk music in Ghana may be found in the music per se, in the artist or in the context of performance.

There are musical norms which the community expect in a musical performance. One such norm is the sound quality. The Ghanaian concept of music (and this may go for other African peoples too) does not unduly discriminate between sounds of definite pitches and sounds of indefinite pitches. It is true that in some situations the emphasis may be on one or the other. However, examples abound in which musical ensembles employ both pitched and unpitched instruments. And both categories of sound are given relatively equal roles in a performance.

Tonangebende Richtungen der Avantgarde haben aus der seit langem tiefgreifend schwelenden gesellschaftlichen Krise der Musik in diesem Jahrhundert die Konsequenz gezogen, musikalische Kunstwerke setzen zu können, die aller Konvention entrückt sind und keinen außermusikalischen Zwecken zu genügen haben. Aus frei mit dem Material umgehender Subjektivität heraus, die bereit ist — ohne das Engagement einer sozialen Selbstverpflichtung — ganz auf sich verwiesen und unter Erleiden einer zuweilen bitter quälenden Einsamkeit zu existieren, entstanden mithin Kompositionen, die ohne Rücksicht auf die nahe Mitwelt und die Realitäten ausschließlich an künstlerischen Notwendigkeiten orientiert waren. Neben der Anbiederung an die gemeine Menge mittels verbindlichen, gefälligen, von Trivialitäten und Klischees durchwirkten Werken der großen Zahl, rangen um keinen Konsensus nachsuchende, gänzlich frei sich wähnende “Schöpfer neuer Musik” um die Realisation von Tonstücken, die die Allgemeinheit brüskiert ablehnte. Paul Hindemith ist als “Bürger-schreck,” als aufrührerisches enfant terrible sowie als rücksichtslos empfundener “Neutöner” der letzt genannten Tendenz während einiger junger Jahre nachgefolgt. Mit dreistem Gestus schrieb und interpretierte er eine antiromantisch gemeinte Musik ohne Weihe, Pathos und konventionelle Schönheit. Diese frech wirkende Demonstration des Unbehagens am Etablierten wurde ihm zeitlebens nicht vergessen und mancherseits auch nicht verziehen, obwohl Hindemith sehr bald in einem Prozess von “Selbstbescheidung” (Winfried Zillig) davon abließ und gesellschaftlich wie auch künstlerisch um ein erneuertes Verhältnis des Einverständnisses bemüht war. Er ging einen Weg des “Hin und Zurück,” der ihm wieder eine Heimstatt eröffnen sollte und somit eine lebhafte Resonanz im Hier und Jetzt.